BIOS-disabled TurboBoost behaves like temperature-disabled TurboBoost

Hello!

I am faced with a rather ironic problem.

I manually disabled Turbo Boost in my laptop's BIOS, and now PPD keeps writing that: "Degraded: yes (high-operating-temperature)"

(A bit related to #75 (closed))

It looks like PPD sees that Turbo Boost is available in the system, but disabled, and therefore considers the system overheated. I specifically disabled this technology to avoid overheating my computer, but PPD perceives it in exactly the opposite sense .

Is there any easy way to solve this problem? At the moment, because of this, KDE Plasma keeps telling me that performance may be reduced due to high temperature (but that's a lie). This is absolutely not critical, and if the solution to this problem is very difficult, then it will not be hard for me to continue living with it.

The README is pretty clear about what's needed for debugging: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/power-profiles-daemon/-/tree/main#debugging

If you're talking about G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all, then I'm sorry, missed this.

G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all

** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.902: Starting power-profiles-daemon version 0.12
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.906: Handling driver 'fake'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.906: probe() failed for driver fake, skipping
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.906: Handling driver 'platform_profile'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.906: No platform_profile sysfs file
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: probe() failed for driver platform_profile, skipping
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Handling driver 'intel_pstate'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy11/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy8/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy6/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy4/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy2/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy9/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy10/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy7/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy5/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy3/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.907: Writing 'powersave' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy1/scaling_governor'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.915: About to start monitoring '/sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo'
(power-profiles-daemon:7323): GLib-GIO-DEBUG: 19:10:12.916: _g_io_module_get_default: Found default implementation local (GLocalVfs) for ‘gio-vfs’
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.916: Found p-state settings
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.916: Handling driver 'placeholder'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.916: Driver 'intel_pstate' already probed, skipping driver 'placeholder'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.916: Handling action 'trickle_charge'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.916: Applying profile 'performance' from configuration file
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.916: Setting active profile 'performance' for reason 'reset' (current: 'performance')
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.916: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy1/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.916: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy3/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy5/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy7/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy10/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy9/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy2/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy4/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy6/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy8/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing 'performance' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy11/energy_performance_preference'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu4/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu6/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu8/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu10/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.917: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu5/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.918: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu7/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.918: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu9/power/energy_perf_bias'
** (power-profiles-daemon:7323): DEBUG: 19:10:12.918: Writing '0' to '/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu11/power/energy_perf_bias'

I specifically disabled this technology to avoid overheating my computer, but PPD perceives it in exactly the opposite sense .

I'm not sure that's the best way to do this. At no point does it "overheat", the CPU will throttle down before that, and will shut off completely before overheating.

What's the output of cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/turbo_pct on your system? My guess is that disabling Turbo in the BIOS doesn't modify the value of this sysfs file, which is either a BIOS or kernel bug.

Of course, this is not the best protection against overheating, but it allows me to have a lower and more stable temperature.

The output of this command is 57. So seems like yes, the sysfs file has not been modified accordingly. In this case it's indeed not the PPD's fault.

Thank you for your time and such a great tool as PPD.

closed

Maybe try using turbostat to disable turboboost? Using msr also looks like a possibility: https://askubuntu.com/a/619881

Well, TurboBoost is actually disabled (cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/no_turbo is 1), but supported (cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/intel_pstate/turbo_pct is 57). An additional disabling with wrmsr does not change anything.

The problem seems to be that PPD considers the supported, but disabled Turbo Boost to be an indicator of overheating of the machine. And here it is not taken into account whether it is manually disabled, or indeed automatically due to overheating.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/power-profiles-daemon/-/blob/main/src/ppd-driver-intel-pstate.c#L279

if (has_turbo ()) {
    ...
    update_no_turbo (pstate);
}

And in update_no_turbo():

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/power-profiles-daemon/-/blob/main/src/ppd-driver-intel-pstate.c#L76

  g_object_set (G_OBJECT (pstate), "performance-degraded",
                turbo_disabled ? "high-operating-temperature" : NULL,
                NULL);

And I don't know if there is any way at all to understand that Turbo Boost was turned off because of overheating, without analyzing temperatures.

The some RedHat documentation says, that

turbo_pct: Displays the percentage of the total performance supported by hardware that is in the turbo range. This number is independent of whether turbo has been disabled or not.

That is, disabling Turbo Boost without changing this flag is a normal practice, apparently.

Feel free to file a bug against the intel-pstate kernel driver at https://bugzilla.kernel.org/, I don't see a way for it to show whether turbo has been disabled in the BIOS, or as a result of increased temperatures.

The driver does know about it:

	if (global.turbo_disabled) {
		pr_notice_once("Turbo disabled by BIOS or unavailable on processor\n");

but doesn't advertise it.

Please paste the URL to the bug once you've done that.

I created a ticket, but I'm not sure that I described the problem completely correctly. If you think I should add or edit something, please tell me.

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216380

Looks good, thanks!

reopened

added kernel problem label

changed title from "high-operating-temperature" with disabled TurboBoost to BIOS-disabled TurboBoost behaves like temperature-disabled TurboBoost